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These essays, by presenting translations of unpublished manuscripts, analyzing new archival sources, and exploring Judith’s representation in narrative, poetry, art, music and theatre, demonstrate how Judith serves as a template for marking changing views of politics, ethics, gender roles and theology from the Patristic period to the nineteenth century.

These essays brim with new examples, new insights, new comparisons... a quantum leap forward.

— Lawrence M. Wills, Journal of Biblical Literature, 13 (2011): 244

... [A] very successful and informative work.

— Friedrich V. Reiterer, BN: Biblische Notizen, 158 (2013): 137-38.

The Book of Judith tells the story of a fictitious Jewish woman beheading Holofernes, the general of a powerful army, to free her people. The story has fascinated artists and authors for centuries, and is becoming a major field of research in its own right.

The Sword of Judith is the first multidisciplinary collection of essays to discuss representations of Judith throughout the centuries. Bringing together scholars from around the world, it transforms our understanding of Judith’s enduring story across a wide range of disciplines. The book includes sections on Judith in Christian, Jewish and secular textual traditions, as well as representations of Judith in art, music and theatre. The collection includes new archival source studies and the translation of unpublished manuscripts and texts previously unavailable in English.

24. Politics, Biblical Debates, and French Dramatic Music on Judith after 1870 Jann Pasler

25. Judith and the "Jew-Eaters" in German VolkstheaterGabrijela Mecky ZaragozaBibliography

Abbreviations

Index

Kevin R. Brine, the founder and director of the Judith Project,
is an independent scholar and visual artist. He currently holds the position of Chairman on the Dean's Council at New York University within the Division of Libraries,
and is also the co-founder, with Clifford Siskin, of The Re: Enlightenment Project at New York University and The New York Public Library. Brine co-edited, with Garland Cannon, Object of Enquiry: The Life, Contributions and Influence of Sir William Jones (1746-1797) (1995). His paintings are published in Kevin R. Brine: The Porch of the Caryatids: Drawings, Paintings and Sculptures (2006).

Elena Ciletti is a Professor
of Art History at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York,
where she teaches Renaissance through to eighteenth-century art in
Europe, women artists and their patrons, and African-American art. Among
her publications are the essays "Patriarchal Ideology in Renaissance
Iconography of Judith," in Refiguring Woman: Perspectives on Gender and the Italian Renaissance (1991) and "'Gran macchina è bellezza:' Looking at the Gentileschi Judiths," in The Artemisia Files (2005).
She is working on a book-length study of Artemisia Gentileschi and the
imagery of Judith in Catholic Reformation culture.

Henrike Lähnemann holds a Chair in Medieval German at Oxford University. Her main
areas of research are medieval German literature in the Latin context,
manuscript studies and the interface of text and image. In 2006, she
published a monograph on medieval German versions of the Book of Judith (Hystoria Judith.
Deutsche Judithdichtungen vom 11. bis zum 16. Jahrhundert) which will
come out in a revised English edition with Open Book Publishers.

A vast collection of images of Judith and Holofernes is available on
ARTstor. Further information about the collection is available here. For those with institutional access to ARTstor, the URL for the collection itself is here.

The New York Public Library is host to The Judith Project,
which is a multidisciplinary collaborative effort under the academic
guidance of a distinguished panel of Judith scholars from around the
world. The mission of The Judith Project is to enhance scholarship on The Book of Judith
and on the theme of Judith and Holofernes in Western culture from
antiquity to the present. More information, together with a
comprehensive bibliographic reference tool, can be found here.

The Sword of Judith is a
wide-ranging collection of essays concerned mainly with the many guises
in which the story of Judith appears in both Jewish and Christian
tradition from pre-Christian times through the Middle Ages to the
Counter-Reformation. [...] This breadth is welcome and refreshing and
gives an idea of the richness of the Judith material.[...] [it] contains
a wealth of interesting, learned, and useful material.

This was a truly collaborative project with very impressive results. In a
review of a collection of essays it is customary to say that some are
more successful than others, but since these essays cover different
aspects of the Judith tradition in a thoroughly complementary way, they
all contribute. [...] The essays brim with new examples, new insights,
new comparisons. For those of us who have been scouring the literature
for years looking for scholarship on the shifting interpretation of
Judith, it is a quantum leap forward.

You can read Wills's full review from the Journal of Biblical Literaturehere.

The Sword of Judith collects
essays across a huge range of disparate approaches. It also is a new
kind of book: you can buy it as a bound volume, or read it on a website
with free access and a very large number of hyperlinks to a range of
original texts, articles and studies, discussion threads, and, of
course, images. [...] The essays are by authors learned in fields of
unusual variety (hence the subtitle), who write informatively about a
small number of characters who have offered material for retelling and
ethical argument for over 2,000 years.